Rudi Pauwels (born 1960) is a Belgian pharmacologist and biotech entrepreneur. He studied pharmaceutical sciences at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (KU Leuven), Belgium. As one of the first researchers in the field of HIV, he played a key role in the fight against the AIDS pandemic by discovering several widely used anti-HIV drugs during his doctorate studies at the Rega Institute (Leuven, Belgium) and while leading biotech companies Tibotec and Virco. In 2020 he was appointed as co-chair of the Diagnostics R&D Working Group of the Access to COVID-19 Tools Accelerator.